The debate over regulating online sports betting has gained institutional traction again in Bolivia, with Federación Boliviana de Fútbol (FBF) president Fernando Costa publicly backing the creation of a specific regulatory framework to legalise and oversee the activity – pointing directly to how central betting revenue has become to sports organisations’ financial sustainability globally. Costa argued that sports betting has become the primary funding source for football worldwide, in some countries outpacing broadcast rights revenue entirely.
Bolivia’s gambling framework runs entirely through Ley 060, passed in November 2010 and administered by the Autoridad de Fiscalización y Control Social del Juego (AJ), the country’s sole licensing and enforcement body for gaming. The law was built for physical lotteries and casinos, not sports betting or online casino products, and the AJ has never issued an operating licence to any online betting platform – Costa confirmed there are currently no licensed or registered digital operators in the country at all. As a result, all online and social-media-based betting activity in Bolivia currently runs through offshore servers entirely outside AJ’s licensing reach, leaving users without consumer protections and the state without any tax collection from the activity.
This isn’t a new conversation: the AJ itself proposed amendments to Ley 060 back in 2020 to introduce online-specific licensing and a modernised penalty regime, and in 2021 the authority separately interpreted the law’s existing text as already covering online gaming in principle – an interpretation that, notably, hasn’t translated into a single actual licence being granted since. More recently, reports indicate the government of President Rodrigo Paz is pushing a fresh reform package in 2026 aimed specifically at pulling online betting out of that regulatory grey zone, though no formal timeline has been confirmed.
Football already tested the waters – and was turned down
Costa’s current push isn’t FBF’s first run at this. Two years ago, the federation formally asked the AJ whether clubs could display betting-brand sponsorships on match kits, a fairly standard revenue stream in football elsewhere in the region – the AJ’s answer was a flat no, given that betting advertising isn’t currently permitted in Bolivia under any circumstance. That history is part of why Costa has taken his case directly to political counterparts rather than back to the regulator alone, revealing he’s held talks with government representatives aimed specifically at opening up Ley 060 to accommodate new betting modalities and bring sports betting under a proper licensing structure for the first time.
Where this leaves Bolivia regionally
The contrast with its neighbours is stark: Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Colombia all have active, if imperfect, regulatory frameworks for online betting, while Bolivia remains one of the few major South American markets with no licensing path at all – a gap that, as in every other unregulated market covered here, means all existing demand is currently being captured by offshore operators paying no local tax and offering no enforceable player protections. Whether Costa’s football-driven advocacy translates into an actual legislative push through Ley 060 is still an open question, but it’s a notably different entry point into the regulatory debate than the tax-and-enforcement framing driving the conversation elsewhere in the region.